Rating: 
Summary: Pynchon's Pinnackle
Review: "Mason & Dixon" is Thomas Pynchon's best work: less impenetrable than "Gravity's Rainbow", warmer than "V." & the lamentable "Vineland". It takes a little effort, but one easily becomes accustomed to the 18th-century mannerisms of type and syntax with which Pynchon chose to clothe this story. And what a story it is...The birth of America from an uneasy brew of Enlightenment principles and nagging superstitions, fueled with coffee & tobacco & other smokables, urban sophistication butting up against rural individualism. After observing the Transit of Venus across the sun in Dutch Sumatra, the grieving widower Mason and caffeine-addled Quaker Dixon take another assignment laying lines for the Penns in the New World, vaguely suspecting their glasses and measuring devices are going to divide more than just the landscape before them. And so begins the big adventure into America. "Mason & Dixon" is a travelogue, an encyclopedia of the science and politics of the Revolutionary era, always with a focus on Pynchon's perennial preterite everyday man who has been passed over by fortune. As with his other fiction, the esoteric historical minutiae is seamlessly woven into conversation and the narrative (Pynchon must have camped out at the Royal Observatory in England and poured over its documents and M & D's letters and diaries to spice this one so richly). A classic for which we'll probably have to do some popular catching up, like "Moby-Dick" and "Ulysses" and any encyclopedic masterpiece which went partially unrecognized at its inaugural appearance.
Rating:
Summary: wonderfully rewarding to the patient voracious reader
Review: After reading all of Pynchon's prior novels.
Coming at this initially with a quivering unsure attitude.
Prepared for quite a long tough deep thorough slog of a read.
At first, blanching at the funny affected
old-fashioned language.
But fulfilled, and more, all expectations.
Also rewarded, brilliantly with Infinitely Fine Wonders
in many places at many Moments.
Even for the few parts I did skip over as boring, I ended jumping back to and re-reading, after realizing that they contained the seeds, of some significant event that blossomed pages later.
(the only example I can think of is the reaching of the crossroads in the north-south and east-west Indian pathways; somehow I'd sleep-read, through the trekking from the river up to the crossroads)
As with all his books, there is a pure joy in the moment to moment advancing through the actual reading for the first time of the text. Yet afterwards, there is a glow of memories, which spread like ripples in some tropical sunset panorama, and diffuse among the other memories of my life.... until I can no longer (nor do I want to) disentangle them -- some memories from the book (as with all his other books) are woven into "who I am" now, and are just as cherished, as fond, as some from the most "real" events of my childhood.
Thus the memory of their first venture overseas when their ship is attacked by the French, as it diffuses on through the book and is re-recollected by the characters, seems to be a memory of my own, that I share with them, from my own life. Like the crazy riverboat ride of Gravity's Rainbow, or the sunny southern California scenes of the Crying of Lot 49, or the northern California scenes of Vineland, or cruddy hotel rooms of V., ....
By some quirk of fate (or was it? did not realize this till I was well into the reading), I was actually reading the book, during the time of the next "transit of Venus" in 2004, after the pair of them that they pursue in the book.
After a while I could really get a kick out of how the Author manipulated his Almost Constant, yet Not Quite Ubiquitous, use of Capitalization .... some very funny Things even embedded at that Layer, e.g. where he chose to capitalize something but NOT another thing ....
And the duck, the duck! worthy of a series of Monty Python sketches in itself and its re-occurrences.
And you know, I actually did see mention of the duck, somewhere else in some other discussion of something involving the same timespan, so it is one more thing the author did NOT entirely make up out of whole cloth ....
And, the drift back and forth between narrators, points of view, timeframes, sometimes the Rev. Cherrycoke, sometimes not, sometimes a quote within a quote within a quote within a whole paragraph within a whole chapter, ...
Of course the obligatory (I knew there had to be some mention of this, just from knowing the time frame of the book, even before reading it!) smoking weed with Colonel (not General yet) Washington, his wife Martha, and their comedian servant, who might be Eddie Murphy's 6-times-great-grandfather.
Rating:
Summary: Not light reading
Review: At best, Pynchon is difficult reading. Sometimes I think that he prides himself on literay obfuscation. That notwithstanding, this is a truly wonderful book, totally alive, incredibly humerous (when one is able to get it) and rich with the cultural manifestations of a facscinating historical era. The characters, particularly the protagonists are portrayed in lifelike detail, and the odd philosophical ramblings are infused with insight. Fully worth the effort of deciphering.
Rating: 
Summary: Mason & Dixon
Review: How can I possibly summarise and explain a Pynchon novel and give it any true justice? I can't, but I'll try. Mason & Dixon is about two guys making a line separating Pennsylvania from Maryland. Of course, that description is about as apt as saying that Moby Dick is about a man searching for a whale. Simply put, the fun is in the journey, the minutiae of their adventures, and the beautifully crafted sentences and paragraphs. Mason & Dixon is constructed in a style that was apparently all the rage in the late 18th century - the time which this novel is set. Here is a taste: 'Found this down at that Market near the Gallows, -'tis a Fiji Islander's Guitar, first introduc'd there two hundred years ago by Portuguese Jesuits, according to the Malay that sold me it.' Random (to my knowledge) capitalisation of words and strange contractions run rampant, but once you get used to the rhythm, it really works, and sets a distinct voice for this story that many other novels lack. Plot-wise, it is about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon plotting the Line that separates two states: Maryland and Pennsylvania. Naturally they don't even begin doing this until about page 350, but that is beside the point. Along the way, they get into many crazy adventures, a lot of them happening in or around taverns and pubs. For example: A mechanical duck that becomes sentient and, angry about years of organic ducks being cooked in France, takes out his revenge on the premier cook at the time, but eventually falls into an obsessive love with him. Getting stoned with George Washington and having good ol' Martha help out when the munchies arrive. Inventing pizza. Visiting a travelling freak show where the prime attraction is a pickled ear that listens to wishes and sometimes grants them. A man swallows a clock, which turns into an immortal, vegetable-clock that drives everyone nearby but him insane with its tick-tocking. A worm thrown into a well soon grows so huge it makes its nest around a castle. A man who turns into a beaver at every full moon. Pynchon writes exquisite sentences, some of which run on and on, and it can be a real challenge to decipher their true meaning. Some, I'm sure, serve only to show just how obtuse and elegant the English language can be, and as with Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon is rather fond of using mathematical descriptions to get his point across. Of particular note is the ending, when Mason and Dixon are older, their adventures over, the only events remaining in their lives being reminiscing. These conversations, between two men who shared years over several continents, is poignant and truly touching. Which was especially odd considering that, during the novel, I didn't really feel much of a connection to either of them, though that can perhaps be attributed to the difficulties of their language. The greatest problem with Mason & Dixon is that it doesn't compare to Gravity's Rainbow. And while a book should be evaluated in its own, in the face of such a behemoth, it simply wasn't possible. For all intents and purposes, Mason & Dixon is a very straight-forward novel with a mostly pre-determined plot: that being the lives of Mason and Dixon. The only room for deviation lies in the adventures of others, or the recollections around a bar table, while enjoyable, unfortunately don't hold a candle to Gravity's Rainbow's frantic change of time, scenery, characters, narrative voice, and so on. So is Mason & Dixon a disappointment? Certainly not. If you've got the patience and the will, there is a fantastic adventure, laden with magick and mathematicks (the k is purposely included), and the book is dense, running at 772 pages. But is Mason & Dixon a disappointment in light of what the author has done before? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.
Rating:
Summary: Pynchon may be the finest writer of this century.
Review: I first read Pynchon about 30 years ago. Unlike some friends who can remember every character and situation of Gravity's Rainbow or V., it was not specific characters or events which most intrigued me in Pynchon's writing, but the sense of place he invokes. The place is not geographic, but experiential. To read Pynchon seriously (and this requires a certain suspension of disbelief), to follow his logic through(it is there, though sometimes difficult)is to experience a paradigm shift. One cannot read Pynchon and fail to experience the world a bit differently afterward. With Mason & Dixon, not only does Pynchon more clearly develop the significance of his theory of Entropy as it applies to human society (the obliteration of the mythic, the homogenization of culture, the blanding of the imagination), but he demonstrates that he has become wordsmith without equal in (at least)current English literature. The meaning of this work aside, it must be read by everyone who writes or wishes to write for the sheer beuty of its prose.This novel represents a synthesis of historic and scientific knowledge, social analysis, wit, insight and sheer mastery of description unequalled by anything I have seen in Twentieth Century literature. Don't be afraid of this book. Be afraid to be afraid of it.
Rating:
Summary: I liked it . . . and then it kept going . . . and then I
Review: liked it some more, and then it kept going. It has passages that are hilarious and moving, and then well, something else happens: something bizarre that's described for a few pages - a glowing Indian, a talking dog - and then disappears, never to be mentioned again. What holds the book together is the wonderfully engaging personalities of Mason and Dixon, but they don't hold it together enough. It's just a stitched together collection of anecdotes, many of them brilliant set pieces but some of them just tiresome, because there's only so many mechanical ducks that can fall from the sky before I start losing my patience. Actually, the duck is great, but still, over 700 pages, not everything can hold one's attention. A picaresque only works if the adventures seem to be building towards something, for example if they keep showing new sides of the characters involved, or have a logic that ties them together that I can't see in Mason & Dixon - like the second half of Don Quixote where all the characters have read the first part, and so on. This book just kept going.
Rating:
Summary: Contemporary Relevance
Review: Mason & Dixon is a book about conflict--between man and nature, master and slave, science and religion, quaker and presbyterian, and, of course, between Mason (running away from tragedy and worried about life) and Dixon (ever seeking new adventures and hopelessly cheerful). The conflicts Pynchon draws out bisect populations, just as borders are drawn between states. The enlightenment--the application of science broadly to all areas of life--made accurate border drawing possible, and I think what we see here is the germ of contemporary enlightenment bashing, which is, I think, the origin of the current political climate in the U.S., popularly termed "Red vs. Blue" by pundits.
Those individuals who hate the surveyors for their work still exist today, but Pynchon makes it clear that this is not just about "Red" vs. "Blue" America. The conflicts are much deeper and cannot be neatly categorized into two armed camps. We have all of the groups today that claim allegiance to Red and Blue--gun owners, religious fanatics, scientists, politicians, businessmen, and the underclass--but Pynchon's gift is that he weaves these groups into one America, not two, that have more in common with each other than not, and whose differences make a dizzyling wonderful tapestry possible. There is almost too much conflict to make a neat border drawing possible. Is that why everyone hates the line they're drawing?
As a book, M&D is probably the best piece of fiction written in the 1990s. It is ironic that Cold Mountain, which won the NBA in 1999, is a book about the same kind of journey--east to west through a conflicted land--but takes place 100 years later. Cold Mountain was a romantic novel, far more accessible to readers, one which Dixon might have enjoyed but Mason most definitely would have scorned.
Give this book your time, and read it with the aid of Google on a nearby computer and maps of South Africa, Pennsylvania and Maryland. If you give it your diligence and passion, it will return in a hundred fold.
Rating:
Summary: Must dash, my Coffee-Pot's whistling ...
Review: Mason & Dixon is Thomas Pynchon's most mature and compassionate work. Unlike in his other works where the characters are used as pretexts for his themes or jokes, in Mason & Dixon, Pynchon actually cares about the characters. They are people you actually care about by the time you reach the back cover. The normal Pynchon wit are on display here, but, this time around Pynchon finds the time to imbue the characters with some humanity. And we realize that the master is also a master at characterization. Both characters are real people with flaws -- things you can admire and things you can laugh at. Mason, the anemic wine drinker, as opposed to Dixon, the fun-loving beer drinker. Pynchon proves he is the best living writer in English literature.
Rating:
Summary: OED required
Review: Okay, I read this twice, but I also subscribed to the Oxford English Dictionary online. To me, this was an economic decsion. The printed version is available either as an encyclopedia costing thousdands of dollars, or a merely absurd condensed version that comes with a necessary magnifying glass. The online OED gives you, basically, a search engine that lets you in on what word meant at a given time. Without the $29/mo subscription, I never would have made it through M&D, which is written, especially in diaogue, in period language. Ben Franklin in tinted specs playing his glass harmonica in a coffee house? Smoking pot with Colonel Washington? A revisiting of V's African slavery angle, these are all great tings, but I can't imagine trying to grasp it without some version of the OED.
Rating: 
Summary: Pynchon is a tough author to enjoy reading.....
Review: Technically and intellectually speaking, Thomas Pynchon is a very skilled writer. His prose is deep, detailed, wry, and encyclopedic all in the same vein. The problem is, he also happens to be a very boring and lackluster storyteller. In 'Mason & Dixon' there is a lot of the wry humor Pynchon has founded his long and eccentric career on. The downside is, for every great page of writing, you have to encounter a hundred other pages which drag on with trite and seemingly unneccessary filler. Pynchon is alot like James Joyce in the sense that you either get him or you don't and you either enjoy his often difficult stream-of-conciousness style or you don't. There's no in-between when it comes to any of his few books. If you're looking for something to read by him because you've heard that he's one of the most famous literary eccentrics since J.D. Salinger, I recommend reading 'The Crying of Lot 49' which is much shorter, more entertaining and probably the most accessible of his works.
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